404 
LECTURES ON HORSES. 
shoulders, causing them to spread farther apart in action, and thus 
to give more room for the play of the hind feet through the in- 
terval between the fore feet. In ordinary trotting, these gentlemen 
say this does not happen ; and hence they account for the re-action 
felt by the rider through the back in one case and not in the other. 
The TROT is accounted, par excellence , the pace in which the 
British horse excels. Foreign horses, in general, are better 
adapted for the canter or the manege than for trotting, their trot 
being high and round, and therefore, in rapid going, necessarily 
very quick, and yet, with all their action and agility, they do not 
make progress — do not get over the ground — with any thing like 
the speed of an English trotter. The action of our trotting horse 
is that which tells in progression rather than makes any parade in 
gait ; and yet this is not of any one peculiar kind, good trotters 
going, as our dealers say, “ in more forms than one.” 
As was observed on a former occasion, a great deal may be 
learnt of what we are to expect in the trot by noting well the walk 
of the horse : if the slow pace be cleverly performed, we have good 
earnest for the creditable execution of the quick pace. We may 
even carry our observation farther than this : we may often tell 
the manner in which the horse will trot from paying attention to 
his mode of walking. Horses trot with high or low action, round 
or straight , darting or dishing , ordinary or grand, See., depend- 
ing upon the manner and energy with which they move their limbs. 
People in general, in estimating trotting action, are too apt to con- 
fine their observation to the fore limbs, forgetting that the hind are 
the propellers of the moving machine, and that upon them, after all, 
must mainly depend progression. While height and rotundity 
of action give beauty, straightness or projecture give progression ; 
and a certain combination of both it is that constitutes what 
we are in the habit of so admiring as to call, by way of distinction, 
a grand trotter. Perhaps, in our country, hardly any better 
examples can be adduced of this perfection in trotting than the 
royal stud furnishes : the Queen’s (not the state) carriage-horses — 
horses standing from sixteen to eighteen hands in height — whose 
grandeur or beauty of action is exceeded only by the awful rate at 
which they get over their ground. Our late sovereign, George 
the Fourth, was celebrated for his noble coach-horses : their trot 
in the royal carriages was of the finest description, and he brought 
his teams to the highest possible degree of perfection by casting 
(for sale) every horse who was not able to keep pace with his 
more fortunate competitors. Of a trotting hackney a better epitome 
can hardly be given than that contained in the distich of the old 
song— 
